Glass, glass, everywhere

Here is some later glass, as fitted to a 1976 P6 LTD, a model whose production ran from 1976 until 1979.



Pilkington changed the lettering to that shown above. Having shortened the previous ‘APPROVED’ to ‘APP’ they flipped the months and quarters. The dots under the ‘ASRI’ signify the quarters of the year, and the dots under the ‘APP’ signify the month in the quarter.

The letters under the ‘TOUGHENED’ signify the year, and if there is no dot, it refers to the year 0.

Hence the above glass was struck in October, 1976.

Raise your glasses

Earlier cars, like this 1969 XT GT, have a different and quite stylish marking.

More glass

Here is the rear window from a hardtop.



Note that the glass is now called ‘ARMOURFLOAT’ which now has eleven letters, but the years still count from the first letter, this being a 1973, fourth quarter piece of glass. This is also ‘ANTISUN’ glass, which means it is tinted, something no doubt well needed on the big flat pane on the rear of the hardtops.

Glass

In 1973, Pilkington changed from using the name ‘Pilkington’ on their glass to the symbol which is shown in the first picture. Some 1973 cars could end up with both 1972 and 1973 marked glass on the same car, as in this XA RPO which was a later 1973 car, yet has some 1972 glass.

Glass

The two examples below show the form of Armourglas with and without the ‘Pilkington’ badge. Both are from 1972 cars, but different quarters. The Pilkington badge was introduced between these two quarters.

Glass part 3

This is ‘ARMOURGLAS’ on an April, 1970 XW Falcon and, as another example, corresponds to the date coding described above.

Glass continued

This is from a replacement door window on an XB four door.

You can see that there is a printed dot above the ‘O’ in ARMOURGLAS, and that ARMOURGLAS is spelt with one ‘S’. This is to allow there to be ten letters in the word, and each letter corresponds to a year in the decade. The years number from the first letter, so, ‘A’ would be 1971, for example; ‘B’ would be 1972, and so on. The decades also roll back around on themselves, so that the last letter, ‘S’ is also the year 1970.

You can also see that there is a printed dot under both the words ‘APPROVED’ and ‘ASRI’. The dots under the first four letters of ‘APPROVED’ mean the four quarters of the year; A = Jan-Mar, P = Apr-Jun, P = Jul-Sept and R = Oct-Dec. Hence the glass above was originally - and originally is an important consideration - struck in the second quarter of 1974, for fitting to an XB Falcon.

The dots under the ‘ASRI’ signify the month within the quarter, and use the ‘SRI’ letters. Hence, in the above glass, the letter under ‘S’ in the ‘ASRI’ indicates the first month of the quarter.

To sum up, the glass pictured above was struck in the first month of the second quarter of 1974, in other words, April, 1974.

The glass above was sourced from Australia to be fitted to an XB that was originally exported to New Zealand.

Glass

Here are some of the markings on glass fitted to Falcons.

The first is from the rear screen on an XB GT hardtop.